Although the English department was the primary audience at first, the work has moved to content-area teachers, too, (with how they can better assist students with Literacy4Life). The work is a pilot project at Dr. Alexander's school as we work together to initiate and grow a collaborative conversation. In a coffee session today teachers visited with us in the library as we discussed the poster and how we could better support literacy instruction throughout the school (the majority of teachers reported that the lack of materials is the #1 obstacle - this includes technology, paper, professional development, funding for continued education, and everyday items of pens, dry-erase markers and even chalk).
The most memorable conversation for me, however, was with an individual who is in charge of the in-school suspension program. He discussed that he works with a large number of kids (often the same kids over and over again) and sees his job as literacy building so they don't repeat offenses. He refuses to let them pass the time under his watch and MAKES THEM WRITE. Together, we worked on several assignments he could host while they are sent to him. His goal: to get every student to reflect on the choices they made that landed them in suspension in the first place and to narrate the story behind what they can do to change it. In his words, "The kids I see often have amazing stories...books of stories...novels...and for some reason when they come to me they want to share them. There's reasons why they're here and we need to embrace their narratives." He tells them, "I want you to write" and that scholastic accomplishments are his top priority. When we went over the poster, he grew excited about the seven life skills. They aligned well, he felt, with the work he has already introduced from Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He also requested a list of books that he could use to help kids think about making choices in their life. I loved being able to support such literacy initiatives. This man was right. If we intend to promote literacy then it must promoted in all communities of a school.
In a few weeks, several teacher will attend the Literacies Essentials conference at Central Connecticut State University with NWP SEED funding. The science department, too, is working on literacy projects to enhance vocabulary instruction, writing effective lab reports, and promoting local watershed experiments to be reported to state agencies (a real world audience).
With all this noted, the one area that has become clear to me is that work in a high needs school also requires LARGER work with administrators in high needs districts. A high school is only part of the larger academic community and every initiative and vision requires collaboration with both district leaders and the teachers who are in the classroom. What I am learning is that, as a nation, we need greater investments from State and National government to promote professional development initiatives district-wide. Teachers want to improve practice and depend on district support.
Today's national culture includes new standards for academic excellence, accountability for achieving better results, oncoming observational assessments, and more classroom diversity (economically, racially, culturally and academically). Yet, at the same time, less and less support for professional development is being invested within districts to help school administrators and teachers assist such change.
The National Writing Project model, teachers teaching teachers, is a tremendous model but the scale needs to be increased.
It is a game of building blocks. Without tremendous investment in creating the strongest foundation possible, all that is piled and layered onto teachers, schools, and students will eventually collapse. There's only so much weight that can be piled on their backs without resources to support them.
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